Goodbye for a Few Months

Dear UUCville Family,

Thank you from the depths of my heart for your wonderful send off last Sunday and for the gift of my upcoming sabbatical. Words cannot adequately express my appreciation for the gifts of your love and support.  Special thanks to everyone who contributed financially to support my sabbatical.  Your generosity takes my breath away. Thank you so much!

With our congregation’s strong staff team, wonderful leadership from the Board, the Religious Education Committee, the RE Volunteers and so many others of you doing such good work for our church, I can comfortably step away from church life for a bit. You all are good!  You all are in good hands — in each other’s hands!

I offer profound thanks to Rev. Susan Karlson for her willingness to serve as halftime Sabbatical Minister of Faith Development. Please help her feel welcome and support her, particularly as she strives to work no more than 20 hours a week per your agreement with her.

As I said last Sunday in worship, “I’ll be back on August 26 and I’ll have new experiences and ideas to talk about and you’ll have new ideas and stories to share with me. We’ll have a lot of catching up to do! Going away on a sabbatical might seem like an easy thing to do… but for me, it is not. I will miss you terribly.  Yet I know that taking my sabbatical is good for the health of the congregation. It is healthy and important for me to step away for a while. You all are vibrant, creative, and loving and good things are going on here! I can’t wait to hear all about it when I get back.  Until then, use your red string to support your practice of going and tending to your heart home.  And the invisible strings we talked about in our story today– the ones from me to you, you to me, from each of us to each other, they will keep us connected even while we are apart.”

Much love to you all,
Rev. Leia